While the ball is in the air: Metaphors and humour in the 2018 World Cup commentaries

Abstract

Metaphors and humour are pervasive elements occurring in many spoken genres, among which, the genre of sports commentaries. Football commentators tend to use war metaphors to highlight the competitive nature of the sport while at the same time making the spectacle and its communication more exciting and vivid (Charteris-Black 2004; Nordin 2008). Punning and humour are additionally used as strategies to engage the audience into the game (Chovanec 2005). In this respect our research tends to analyze the use of metaphors and humour by Macedonian TV commentators during the World Cup 2018 and discuss their role and contribution to the ‘vividness’ of the sports language. Through a linguistic analysis of the commentaries of ten sport matches played during the 2018 World Cup, we intend to identify instances of metaphors and humour used in order to analyze and discuss their role in the sports commentaries. In particular we were interested in the following issues: a) type and function of metaphors according to the source domain, and b) type and function of humour identified in the material. In order to investigate the issue further, we conducted semi-structured interviews with two Macedonian commentators making a more detailed inquiry about the use of metaphors and humor in their live commentaries.